While many marketers are scrambling for links, any links, an area that is often overlooked is topic-specific search engines. What many don't realize is that these engines do produce traffic, and they often contain traffic that is very targeted. Anyone who has taken time to analyze weblogs and track sales sources will likely see that targeted traffic converts at a significantly higher rate than non-targeted traffic.

A savvy online marketer realizes that often, quality of visitor is far more important than quantity of visitors. Web marketers should focus their energies on attracting targeted traffic whenever possible.

For example, if you sell saddles, advertising on a site related to horses or advertising on a topical search engine like http://www.horse-stall.net will bring significantly more sales than advertising on a generic web site or search engine.

Niche engines are considerably smaller than general search engines but they can still be quite lucrative. The small size of a niche or topic-specific engine ensures that there are few competitors, and advertisers are generally willing to pay a little more for focused traffic. Advertisers appreciate unique benefit of reaching a very targeted audience who have a higher likelihood of purchasing their product or service. As a result, topic-specific search engines and directories are a burgeoning market. There is far less competition in niche directories and dominating a specific market segment and establishing brand recognition is significantly easier.

One of reasons that Yahoo! can be so discriminating is because each site that makes it into directory is added by hand. Unlike most Search Engines that have 'robots' that breeze through your website, take what they want, and add you to their list of 10,000's (100,000's?) of sites - Yahoo! literally goes through each site individually and decides whether you make it or not.

We have a few tips for you to make your life easier:

1. First and foremost, it's a fact: Yahoo! does want your money. If you pay them $199, they WILL review your site within 7 days, and may - or may not - add you to their directory. And, they do NOT promise you will get in. Only that they will review your site within time frame they promised. However, I have noticed that this is not a money-grabbing ploy. If you submit your site properly and appropriately, you should breeze right in. Usually, sites that do not make it are generally questionable in nature (although they do have a $600 Adult Site Submission), or are incomplete and unfinished.

***Note: Yahoo! will NOT list your website in it's main op level categories anymore without $199 submission fee. However, you can still submit to Regional/local Categories old-fashioned way.****

Here are guidelines that we highly recommend, especially if you're paying for your submission - you really want it to be accepted, right?:

a. Make sure you choose appropriate category. Do several searches for comparable sites and choose best one for your website.

b. Your site MUST be complete. NO "Under Construction" signs, or "Stay Tuned" notices anywhere, that is a definite disqualifier.